Friday, January 13, 2012

I played a 500 point game at the GW store yesterday, and this time I took pictures! I played the same marine list as last time:Captain, power weapon, melta bomb 12010 tac marines, fist, flamer, plasma cannon 2005 scouts, sniper rifles 75Dreadnought 105

My opponent decided to play a Khorne list, with two units of Khorne berserkers in rhinos and a champion (I think) with daemon weapon.

I actually remembered to keep track of the turns this time... almost. I may have missed a turn near the start. We rolled capture and control, normal deployment. He placed his objective on my side so he could rush over, assault me, then grab the objective. I placed mine on a ruin so my snipers could sit on it. He went first and put his rhinos as far forwards as he could. I combat squad my tacs and put them near his objective, set my snipers on the ruin, and put my dread where it could get side armour shots on the rhinos as they rushed towards the objectives. Then I remembered rhino side armour is the same as the front, duh. In retrospect I suppose I should have put it between my tacs and his rhinos.

I didn't try to steal initiative, thinking he was probably out of range anyway. Stupid me, a six inch move and twenty four inch multimelta, thirty six inch snipers and plasma cannon, I should have tried at least. Anyway, he drove forwards and ended his turn. I moved my dread, fired the multimelta... and rolled a one. The snipers failed to rend. Then I decided to fire the plasma cannon. I rolled a one for overheating. Then a one for my armour save. Sigh.

So the first casualty of the game was my canoneer. This guy is clearly in need of help of some kind - two games ago he shot himself in the head, if you recall.

Next turn my opponent drove his rhino up to my tac squads and ended his turn. I walked closer with my dread and surrounded the nearest rhino as best I could with my marines - the plan was to destroy it with shooting (hoping that some traitor marines would not be able to disembark and be destroyed) and assault the unit to rob them of furious charge, or failing that destroy it with the fist and assault the contents with my second squad and captain.

The black marble is the objective.

"Surround it men!"

The dread fired... and rolled a one. The scouts got two hits but no rends. The sergeant's squad attacked with three fist attacks and four (I forgot the canoneer was dead) krak grenades but needed sixes to hit, which they didn't get. The second squad attacked with a melta bomb and five krak grenades, but didn't manage to hit a thing. So I had just set my whole army on a single rhino without so much as a single glancing hit.

In response he disembarked his champion from the nearly-surrounded rhino (I hadn't managed to block the rear hatch), leaving the unit behind. The other rhino disgorged it's contents then drove off to block my dread. He charged the champion into the fist squad and the other unit into the captain's squad.

Let the slaughter begin!

The Dreadnought is unable to reach them.

It seems his champion rolls 2d6 extra attacks thanks to the daemon weapon, but loses a wound for every 1. I think he rolled a 10 for a total of something like 14 power weapon attacks, wiping all four before they could hit. The other unit directed an unholy number of attacks at the tac marines and ignored the captain, wiping them out. The captain, striking at the same time, failed to cause a single wound...

In my turn I tried to circumnavigate the offending rhino with my dread in order to get closer to the berzerkers, before shooting at and assaulting it. Between a point-blank multimelta and three S10 attacks I managed to immobilize it. Sigh. The snipers shot at the other and did nothing. In assault my captain finally claimed a kill (my first one I think)... then took three wounds and failed two of the 3+ saves, losing the combat by one, failing his leadership test and running off like a little baby.

His full rhino gave chase while the squad moved over to his objective, trying to block my dread from getting in contesting range. Eyeballing it, it looked like my dread was already in range, but just to be sure I tried to move closer in my turn. After watching my captain flee the battlezone and disappear, I pointed the dread at his berserkers, giving up on the rhino. Firing with the storm bolter and multimelta point-blank, I rolled well for a change, scoring three wounds, but he saved the bolter shots. Still, that was my second kill, and my snipers added a third with a rending shot. In assault the dread landed a single hit... and rolled a one to wound. Sigh.

Now we were on turn 5, to the best of our knowledge. In his turn he brought the occupied rhino back over towards my scouts and disembarked his second squad of berserkers, running them as close as he could (which was pretty close). The assault with the dread went nowhere again; I couldn't hit against the berserkers higher weapon skill, and he couldn't roll consecutive sixes for his krak grenades.

In my turn everyone failed to do anything at all. He rolled to see if the game would continue, and it didn't. His berserkers were sitting on his objective with my dread contesting, and my scouts were sitting on mine with his other berserkers contesting, so officially it was a draw.

The snipers were spared when the ref blew the ending whistle and the Khornate Berserkers turned around and went home.

My kill tally. Not impressed.

Sigh. Humanity's Finest my foot.

Having said that, in another turn my scouts would have been wiped out, giving him the win. Besides he clearly wasn't playing seriously - he never fired a single shot all game, at one point he contemplated ramming my dread but decided to just stop in it's way. Also, his list had no anti-tank at all, not even a power fist.

Clearly my team performed terribly. The Dread just kept missing, at one point he landed a single hit on a berserker and rolled a 1 to wound. His finally tally was 1 single berserker and immobilizing a rhino. My Captain really let me down, only killing a single marine before failing two saves out of three and running away. My power fist sarge failed to land a single hit. Again. That's four games in a row now, for a 100% failure rate. And these guys are supposed to be heroes of the Imperium? In contrast I expect my snipers to be crap, which they were. Oh, and the plasma canoneer screwed up again. Maybe he'll do better when I finish painting him.

So what did I learn? Well, next time I'll set my troops farther back and force them to come through my dreadnought. Also, snipers are useless without Telion. I'm sorry, I can't pretend anymore: long-range shooting (pretty much the definition of sniping) is extremely difficult and demanding, so why would you assign the task to your worst marksmen? Let me guess, it was a typo in the Codex Astartes, and only the Space Wolves are rebellious enough to ignore it. In the future I'll go for bolters or CC weapons, and possibly a sarge with power fist and shotgun.

Anyway, it was a fun game despite my rotten luck, my opponent was great fun to play against and just hang out with, and I remembered to take pictures so a good time all round.